Did Replica P-40's Fly in movie ?

[Glen]

Greetings
I have one for the Group. In all the movie's Like Tora Tora Tora & Pearl Harbor Did any of the replica P-40's Fly ?

[DanteC]

My guess is....No. I saw one of the replicas in person and it was pretty crude up close, not bad from a distance. I think they were fiberglass. I could very well be wrong, though.

[hang the expense]

In a word, no. Watch tora,tora,tora and as a p-40 taxies out of the line you can see cables attached to it for engine controls.Clever for the time and gave the stunt men a real run for their money.Really cool scene. they had real allisons and curtiss props which is a shame seeing what curtiss props go for these days.

[Steve Nelson]

Well, there was one unplanned "flight." According to the director's commentary on the DVD, the scene where the P-40 ploughs into the line of parked aircraft didn't go as expected. The plane was supposed to simply explode while taxiing, but as it got up to speed, the wings started generating lift. One wing came off the ground, and since the plane was steered with the brakes, it went completely out of control and crashed into the parked planes (all replicas, thankfully.) The special effects guys detonated the explosives to keep the runaway plane from going any further, but all those stunt guys you see scrambling for their lives weren't acting!


SN

[Jerry O'Neill]

I don't want to rain on anybody's parade, but some of the mock-up P-40's did "fly". I think you can see them taking off "Vertically" as they are blown up!

One of the Tora mock-ups did "fly" twice in in 1979 during the making of the movie "1941". It was launched off a raised track so that they could film it crashing into the street! They had to do it a second time due to the gears slipping and not attaining enough forward speed to land where they wanted it to. I guess that's the farthest flight for any of the P-40 mock-ups!
Blue skies,
Jerry

[rwdfresno]

We have one of the "Pearl Harbor" P-40s and there is no way one of these could fly. They have a steal welded frame with a plywood and fiberglass shell. You can sit in it and looks really cool sitting in the hangar with the jeeps parked around it. We also used to have a "Battle of Brittan" Plywood Spitfire and it was nicely built, mostly hand crafted out of wood. It looked really nice, except the tail wheel wasn't all that strong and it would always break. Bill Klaers built some really nice replica P-51s several years back, some of the best I have seen.